Kathy to Hilary, May 16, 1972 cont., Tehran, Iran Friend, as I call my Afghani when I talk to Leslie, is part of the reason I’m doing okay. Now I know you’re thinking it has to do with Afghanistan’s only natural resource--shit [hashish]--but the attraction isn’t that, for chrissakes. It’s kind of comfy to walk around school holding hands, very middle class, I know, but there are LIMITS to what can be done at school. We’ve been extremely virtuous for chrissakes (again) (have you embraced a faith--it’s so fashionable to be a Jesus freak--I almost did but was seduced away from it by the devil in Friend’s fair form), which my Dutch friend Marian has a hard time believing. She and I trade dirty experiences during Biology and if you heard us you would think we were the two biggest putas in the whole school, which can’t be true.
Johnny (right) and a friend on the steps at school 
Our English teacher had a party which revealed to me my true calling, which is playing nurse to drunk kids. I was helping them to the toilet all night, holding their heads when they vomited all over me. Such good friends. Not used to drinking. What did I say about masochistic? My best dress--a blue shirtdress--I was wearing that and a silver ankle bracelet Friend had given me--so I had to change into the teacher’s jeans and Friend’s jacket worn sans shirt. The zipper wouldn’t zip on the jeans because the English teacher is very skinny. Some night. Kriton, Johnny (Friend), and I stayed straight the whole night--we all get brownie points for that. I don’t know if you would like my friends; we are all common and ever so dowdy. If you came here you’d have to get over the cultural shock before becoming a fair judge, and it’s taken me over a year.
Enough of this letter! You must pardon the atrocious English, spelling especially, and WRITE BACK, any sort of letter would do.
Alles Gute und viele Grüsse von deiner Kathy
PS [handwritten in pencil]: I know that when one hasn’t written for a long time it seems as if so much has happened and you could never say it so that you came out a heroine in your story. I often wonder what you’re like now. People change so much in one and three-quarter years, especially if they’re teenagers (I guess we really are OFFICIALLY teenagers now, with all the capricious emotions and faults that the title entails) and I wonder...At any rate, I suppose our paths will one day cross again--that happens, so you hear, and it would be interesting, if I were the analytical sort--to see the growths, prejudices of two people who had the same sort of early environment (but not early early environ.) and education but whose later ones were different. This is some kind of weird digression, nicht wahr? I’ve lost touch with the old homestead--childhood innocence and all that crap--but sometimes it really seems like Utopia. So green and running like crazy kids down to the Potomac all the time. I don’t want to go back--there is so much else to see and I don’t know if I have the time. What are your plans? There is so much that must be done and so little that I can do, I don’t know where to begin.
KAT
6:22:25 AM 
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